Skirting with Disaster

Since the weather here has been extremely hot this summer I thought some nice easy summer skirts would do the trick to keep me cool.  Well, both of these projects managed to get my temperature to rise almost to the boiling point!

New Look 6898

This skirt was up first, View E to be exact.  I figured since I always cut my patterns at size 12 then add 1/2" to the side seams why not bypass that little exercise and just cut the size 14.  Of course the skirt was WAY too large, but surprisingly the wasitband (and yes I did make sure and cut the right size) was too small to fit on the skirt!!!  Go figure!?!?

So I took it in 1/4" at each side seam, still too big.  Another 1/4" and STILL to big.  What the "F"?  I had two options at this point - take it a part or consider it done for and move on.

I went with option one, taking it a part and recutting at a size 12.  It was still too big with 5/8" seams.  Another 1/8" didn't help, but the final 1/4" seamed (ha,ha stupid pun intended) to do the trick.  And the waistband which was originally cut at size 14 fit perfectly!!! Again, what the "F".

I found the zipper insertion on the skirt a "PITA" but I can't see any other way of doing it because the waistband has to go before the zipper.  Mine came out a little wonky, not too bad, maybe it just takes practice.

At the original length the skirt looked very frumpy on me.  I had planned to put a contrasting band along the bottom, but at this point just wanted to get this skirt in the finished column.  So I cut 1 1/2" off the bottom, sewed a narrow 1/4 hem, them hand stitched another 1 1/4" hem.  It's a little shorter than I normally wear but not too scandalous for a old lady like me, especially in the hot summer.

So here she is, finally:

Would I make another one, I'm not sure at this point.  It was a lot fuller than the pattern covered showed.  It's okay.

McCall's 3023

After all the trouble with that skirt I decided to go for one that was EASY, really easy.  So I turned to McCall's 3023, which is OOP.

Seriously, you can not get much easier than this, two seams, and elastic casing and a hem......what could go wrong?

I chose the shortest version and cut it at the Medium size (12-14).  This thing is HUGE!!! And again, much fuller than I thought it would be.  And let's not talk about the frump factor, I'm sure part of that was due to the fact it was HUGE!!!  I also wasn't crazy about the skinny 1/2" casing, I think it just needs to be a little wider, 3/4" would be better.

So here is where this skirt is at:

I love this cotton print fabric, it has lots of different colors in it so can be worn with many different tops.  I think I will just take it a part and use another skirt that I have made several times before, that has a narrow waistband and zipper closure. 

I still would like a few more cool cotton skirts for summer, but I think these two are off the list for now.